I dreamt that I decided at the last minute to go on a trip to Tokyo with two friends. These corresponded to no specific people I know in waking life, but one was a fellow American expatriate, and the other was a Taiwanese man who looked like he probably had some White blood and who was very proud of his perfectly fluent English, which he had acquired via some special patented method. He always introduced himself to people as a "polymath," and when they asked what he meant by that, he would just stare at them like in an Anakin-and-Padme meme.
Our reason for wanting to go to Tokyo (though over the course of the dream, the city imperceptibly changed from Tokyo to Paris) was to attend some kind of bargain-basement music festival. I would be mostly unknown bands, many of them bad. I said it's always sad when they have to end a concert early because the audience just loses interest. One of my friends said that it wouldn't all be no-name bands, as he had heard Journey would be playing. I was unimpressed.
Before the festival started, we checked out the food court at the venue for future reference. Nothing was open yet, but menus with prices were posted. Many of the restaurants were outrageously expensive, tens of thousands of dollars. Some offerings were only one or two dollars, but those were just tiny drinks in bottles the size of test tubes.
Later, we were going down the street in what was by now Paris. I kept trying parkour moves, which I executed successfully except for the landing. I always slipped and fell, but the fall never hurt me. For example, I would jump from one rooftop to another but slip when I landed and fall to the ground. Then I'd get up as if nothing had happened.
I said, "It sucks to be aging and losing my agility. Luckily I'm still spry enough not to be injured when I fall."
(Note: In waking life, though scarcely over-fastidious about the language I use, I have always had a particular distaste for that slang use of suck and never use it. It's just an unpleasant word. It's my impression that its use peaked with my own generation, so using it here may have been a self-conscious attempt to sound "old," just as my use of spry clearly was.)
My friends said it was probably my shoes, not my age, but I insisted: "No, I'm getting old. Everyone does," and reinforced that statement with a Tucker Carlson impression: "Ob-viously. That's just true." (I reminded myself of one of the Boster stories, where Boster keeps bemoaning how old he is, while Blendu and Little Albert insist that he's actually still young.)
Despite my protest, it was the shoes, though. (Why am I always dreaming about shoes?) I was wearing an old pair of blue Adidas sneakers, and the soles had been worn perfectly smooth, providing no traction. I had been in a hurry and had just grabbed the shoes my wife handed me without thinking. I should have been more careful.
Later, the three of us were biking down the street when I suddenly got a flat tire. Luckily, it happened right in front of a bike repair shop (suspicious, that!), so we immediately took the bike in there. They very quickly replaced the tires, having discovered that in fact both of them were flat.
I wanted to ask how much I had to pay, but I couldn't remember the necessary French. Then I noticed that one of the shop's employees was an elderly Chinese woman, and I heard her say something to herself in Mandarin. I said in Chinese, "You know, you really startled me when you spoke Chinese just now. I about jumped out of my skin!" She replied in fluent English that she was even more startled to hear a White person speaking such idiomatic Chinese and added, "This has made me realize the beauty of the Northern peoples even though you come from a distant land." (I referenced this line in my last post, "Harad and (U)RV.")
The Chinese woman told me that the tire change would cost 180. I took out my wallet, only to find that in my hasty preparations for the trip I had neglected to exchange currency and had only Taiwanese money. Then both of my friends found that they, too, had omitted to get any local currency. (The name of this currency was never specified, except earlier in the dream when it was dollars, but the setting was still Tokyo at that point.) Without missing a beat, they both ran outside to a fountain and began rummaging in the water for coins. After a second's hesitation, I joined them.
The coins here were not round but were shaped like the various member states of the EU and were to scale, with larger countries used for larger denominations. If you got a complete set of coins, you could fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle and have a map of Europe. (I'm sure this detail was inspired by Bruce's recent post about the Royal Mint "making a jigsaw from UK coinage."). I thought this was a bad design, since coins with irregular and sometimes angular edges would be harder on the pockets than round ones, but then I reflected that I carry keys in my pockets all the time and suffer no adverse effects. My friends were gathering lots of small-denomination coins and trying to get enough to add up to 180, but I found one coin worth 100 and another worth 80, which was much more convenient.
We went back to the bike shop and found that they had thrown the bike outside. I paid for the tire change and, although I certainly remembered enough French to say merci beaucoup, I decided that for consistency's sake I should thank her in Chinese.
Later, we were taking something like a minecart up to the top of a building that was shaped like a very wide bell curve. (Another link to URV, whose name is made to rhyme with "graded on a curve" in the poem I would read the next day.) At the top was the entrance to a movie theater, and we had to be careful to get out of the cart at just the right time, which was difficult because it was dark by now.
"This building is called Laundromat 217 or something like that," said one of my friends.
"Or something like that!" I said. "I hate it when things just have numbers for names because they're so hard to remember. That's why I'd hate to live in New York, where it's all 42nd Street and 72nd Avenue."
We realized we'd gone past the entrance.
"You guys, we have to go back," said one of my friends. "Do you know what movie is playing in there? The GOAT. I just have to see it, and this is my only chance." (Note: Upon waking, I discovered that a movie called GOAT was just released this past February. As far as I know, I had no knowledge of this prior to the dream.)
Since the minecart couldn't be put in reverse, we had to go back using what my friends called "pods" -- tiny vehicles equipped with suction cups that could be used to climb up walls. They had had these in their backpacks, including an extra one for me.
I said, "It's weird that you forgot basic things like exchanging currency but remembered to bring this spy equipment. It's almost like you're spies."
Anakin stare.
We went back to the theater entrance with our "pods" and went inside without buying tickets (because we still didn't have any local currency). We were chased out by security guards, immediately ran back in by the entrance next door, and were chased out again.
To avoid being caught, we decided to pose as a TV crew doing a documentary about bars. I took a microphone out of my bag, a friend took a video camera out of his, and the other friend held up his jacket as an improvised reflector. We went over to an open-air bar right next to the theater and started "interviewing" patrons. ("Hello, sir. Why are you in a bar?") We figured this would make us invisible to the security guards from the theater, since they weren't looking for a TV crew.
A woman in business wear who had been walking down the street stopped and stared at us. Since the whole point was not to be noticed, I tried to discourage her interest by throwing something at her. She just kept staring.
We decided to try running into the theater one more time. This time, hanging on the wall near the entrance were several jumpsuits, helpfully labeled "Security Guard Uniform" in English. My two friends each grabbed one and put it on as they ran, but I didn't have their skillz and was a little slower. They had already suited up when I belatedly noticed another uniform on the wall, took it down, and put it on. I didn't notice until too late that it was -- and was labeled as -- not a jumpsuit but a dress. The incongruity of a man in a dress was enough to alert the real security guards, and we got chased out again, at which point I woke up.
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